Dying to Be Alive

I remember the first time I died. I was given the chance to take with me a few material objects and have a few people at my side in the time of my death. Making my list was relatively easy. As the meditation went further Sister Mary told us “Okay, now, cross someone off your list – they can not be there at the time of your death.” What? Well, okay, I’ll cross off the person who had been in my life the least amount of time. Four people left now, that’s a good list. “Now cross off another” she prompted. It was getting tougher until it came down to crossing every name off the list but one. Only one person would be allowed at my bedside in the time of my death.

 

Granted this was an exercise during my training to be a Hospice volunteer and not my actual death but the exercise brought an awareness that I didn’t have before – the relationships to people in my life and how important they truly are. Crossing off my Dad’s name, my sister, my girlfriend was harder than I had admitted at the time. My mom was the one person I could not exclude. At the time of that exercise I wasn’t aware how much I needed her, or how the moment of crossing over from this life to the next wanted to be done with the connection to the one person who brought me into this world.

 

When I met Jo she was a 68 year old woman, worn from all the years she had worked caring for sick, injured people as a nurse. She traveled some but not much and had decided when she retired she would travel the vast, unseen world and do the things she had always dreamt.  I met her in a nursing home that smelled of old urine and stale cafeteria food. She was bed bound, unable to walk, or even bath herself. Shortly after her retirement she developed a rare disease that was incurable, and would slowly kill her. The only thing she had was time, and a few birds that would visit her window that overlooked the parking lot of an industrial park. I visited her a few times a week for about 5 months. I filled the pockets of my jacket with birdseed and listened to her giggle as I would pry open the window of her room and line the ledge with seed so she could attract more feathered friends to watch. They looked the same to me, but Jo knew which bird  were bullies, and which ones were timid. Sometimes we’d watch tv, sometimes I’d give her a massage, but a lot of times we talked about life and what I learned from Jo is to not wait to start being alive. Live now, live while you can, she would say with a look in her eye that spoke of regret.

 

The world we live is fast paced, full of stimuli, chaos, traffic, to do lists, people all around us, media flashing in our faces, idle chit chat, the constant pressure of what needs to be done and the ever so fast ticking away canary clock that we just can’t seem to beat. We race it every day, frantically trying to shove everything into the tiny time frames that we have allotted for each task. Sometimes one spills into the next and into the next until we are buried in our own time bomb just waiting to implode. We become restless, agitated, and constantly strained and drained. We beat ourselves up if we do not accomplish all the tasks we have piled upon ourselves even when our lists are unrealistic and yet when someone asks us to do more we most often say yes because we are so afraid to say no to someone else’s needs and desires. We have learned to multi-task to the point that if we aren’t doing 4 things at once, we feel we aren’t doing enough. Right now as I type this I have a laptop, an iPod, a cell phone, all within reach. I am logged on so that I am alerted as soon as an email hits my inbox, and people can IM me whenever they feel. I have one browser set to the news, another to my email, and still yet another is launched with a calendar of upcoming events. Essentially I can be instant messaging one person while talking on the phone to another, and flip to another window to write an email, all while I have music playing in the background and if that isn’t enough … someone else might send me a text message on my phone!

 

Stop. Turn it all off.

 

What would your home sound like if you turned off the electricity? Remember when you were a child and the lights went out during a storm? What did you do? You lit candles and talked to each other. You listened. You could hear your neighbors moving around. You could hear your thoughts. You played games with a flashlight. It was okay to not be on the phone or the computer or the tv or the radio because you had an excuse, the electricity was out. Secretly, deep down we all loved it when the lights went out – it was exciting.

 

I want you to pretend for a moment. Pretend there is a ferocious storm outside and you’ve just lost all the power to everything you own. All you have is silence, and one candle. Take a deep breath, and take off your watch. Don’t take notice of the time and just spend a few minutes in this new found silence day dreaming about what you really want to do. Go ahead, do it … I’ll wait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What did you come up with? Did you take a long over due vacation in your head? Maybe spend some time discovering new land in a foreign country? Did you sleep in on a weekday or spend an afternoon just reading while still in your pajamas? Maybe you spent some time volunteering for an organization or giving back to your community. Maybe you got dirty in your herb and flower garden or painted on that dusty canvas that’s been sitting in your closet.  Of those activities which ones would you feel guilty if you allowed yourself to do them, when the lights were on?

 

We are made up of more than the fancy titles that follow or precede our names. We are more than the job we go to every day, and certainly more than the superficial day to day combat that we battle continually – the traffic, the congestion of our society, the cell phones that are chained to our sides. We have dreams, we have great depth, we have unfurled passion, we have incredible energy that sometimes lurks in the recesses of our over amplified minds, shoved back to the farthest corner of our eager hearts and buried beneath all the “stuff” from paragraph 4. It remains trapped until one of two things happens …. We die, or we hit a breaking point in our life when we stop and say “enough is enough, life is meant to be more than this” and we grab a shovel and start digging for the real gold that lies within.

 

Some people, like Jo, know the real gold is there but choose to wait to start digging when the tasks are done and there is “more time”. But sometimes things happen, life happens, as it did with Jo and when the time came for her to dig it was too late.

 

My visits with Jo were at a time in my own life when I had to make a life changing decision. I had an opportunity to move across the country to pursue a dream within my chosen field of work. It meant giving up everything I had come to know and the comforts of my entrenched life in Arizona to travel to a place I knew very little about and knew no one essentially. I flew out to South Carolina to interview and see if this change would be a good fit. Before I left, I visited Jo to let her know I wasn’t going to see her that week and told her about my opportunity, discussing some of my fears about making such a huge move. I remember her saying to me, “If it feels right in your heart, don’t let fear be what stops you.” I returned from my trip and had decided to take the unforeseen plunge into the unknown and fearlessly make the move 3,000 miles away. Two days after my return I had two things on my agenda – have a hitch installed on my truck for the move, and go see Jo to tell her my news. While sitting in the UHaul store waiting for them to finish installing the hitch that would carry my life across the USA, I received a phone call from my Hospice coordinator, Jo had died while I was gone. In a strange way it gave me peace in my decision to pursue my dream; she would have done so if she had it to do over. But there are no do overs, and that is what she taught me more than anything.  She might not have  heard the good news from me but I felt certain a little birdie might have told her.

 

At what point in our life do we start living? Sure, we take in a breath every second, we maintain life at a sustainable level, we do things to prolong our life even. What does it mean to you personally to be alive? Are you content with how things are? Are you satisfied at the end of the day that you achieved a step closer to your life dreams? Do you feel your days are complete, fulfilled, full of gratitude and passion? Because you know, you are never going to get that day back – it’s gone. Once it’s over, it’s over – no do overs according to Jo. How many days have you already wasted? Since being back in the mainstream business world I have seen my own life make a screeching halt. Like most of our sleepy society I am awakened to the buzzing of a despised alarm clock in which I dutifully get up and follow primarily the same routine each morning – make coffee that always tastes too weak, shower, dress, check email, walk the dog, gather my things, and head off to the office. I work 8 hours a day, fight the traffic to come home, fix myself dinner which is often fast and unhealthy, watch the evening news about what’s wrong in our world, work on chores that never seem to end, or run errands that are also endless, read bits and pieces from a book I keep promising to finish, fall asleep reading the book so I’ll go to bed only to not be able to sleep because of the million thoughts that run through my head. The next day I start the same ground hog process all over again. Sprinkle into that schedule throughout the week all the necessary things that have to be done, laundry, pay bills, grocery shop, clean the house you seem to never have enough time in, keep appointments - even the ones you aren’t sure why you made to begin with, make more appointments because that’s what we do – fill our schedule, ya di da you know how the list goes …

 

My move to Arizona was an impulsive attempt one day to find a connection to my life and to stop the rat race I thought I thrived upon. At that time I lived in Ohio and was, again, sitting on the couch watching the evening news after a long day at work. It was January 27th, 1993, it was  brutally cold outside,  7 degrees, ugly cloudy dull day that went through your bones even in my heated apartment. The weather man came on and predicted another weeks worth of misery for us, however, 2500 miles away in Phoenix, Arizona it was 80’ and sunny! As quickly as he gave the forecast, I impulsively decided I was moving to the warmest place in the US. So on my couch  at 914 4th Avenue, Columbus Ohio I had decided that I had had enough. I called my brother before the news even ended.

 

“Kevin, what are you doing this weekend?” (It was a Monday when I called him) “Nothing” he answered. We all did nothing this time of year, it was too cold to do anything else! “Help me move.” I demanded him. “Move? Where?” I could tell he was dreading the idea of possibly having to help me move in these frigid temperatures. “To Arizona” I answered. There was a long, “did he hang up on me?” kind of silence before he finally asked if I was kidding.

 

I had never been to Arizona. I had $423 in my savings account. I had no job lined up, I had no idea what to expect – except 80 degrees and sunshine! I had an uncle who lived in Arizona, I hadn’t seen him in over 15 years but surely he would let me stay with him for a month until I found a job. I called him immediately, “Stan, this is Dakota.” “Who?” he asked.

 

I spent the next few days throwing away, storing away, giving away or packing it up. Whatever fit in my mini-van including my dog, and Kevin, went with me. On February 3rd, we crossed the state line and entered into a place I now call home, and did call home for 14 years following that cold January day.

 

Some thought I was crazy. My whole family thought I would turn around and come home after a few months. My friends thought I had lost my mind. No one believed I would possibly make it with so little money and no job. All the typical security things we have in place before we make such a move weren’t there and the predictions were that without them, I inevitably would fail. The struggles in the beginning were tough, but not impossible. I worked part time as a coffee barista for Coffee Plantation in Tempe while I got my massage business going. Along with an income it also gave me a chance to meet some new friends. In a matter of a few months I had already started to establish a life complete with friends, activities, a home, and job. I learned that it wasn’t crazy in any sense, it was the best decision I had ever made. It was an impulsive decision that probably saved my life.

 

I think about the “what if’s” from time to time. What if I had listened to everyone who thought I was crazy or would fail? What if I hadn’t been so impulsive? What if I had allowed my own fears to keep me from jumping into the unknown? What if I had just thought “someday I’d like to move there” without ever really doing it? What if I hadn’t been where I was in that moment that allowed me to be open to such a drastic change? What if I had only gotten as far as Kansas?

 

There is a time in our lives, and I believe we all reach this point sooner or later, where we step outside of the box labeled “Fears, Procrastinations, and Everyone Else’s Opinions” and we make a decision based solely on what our own beating heart desires. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it usually becomes an undeniable mark in time where everything turns around and life becomes not only good, but amazing. We take back our power when we make those types of decisions, we are powerful beyond measure when we defy all the odds and make it happen for ourselves. We are meant to break barriers and explore uncharted lands. It is human nature to be wildly curious, and fearlessly adventurous, and to want our lives to feel complete and whole. Too often we allow the “what if’s” to direct our focus, and paralyze us. Over time we forget what it is we truly desired because it is so buried with the fears and the safety devices, we no longer see our goals or desires without the filters we surround ourselves with.

 

We all long to be alive, to feel life at its deepest and most satisfying levels. We yearn to love, and be loved, deeply and completely. We search for meaning that fulfills our spirit and moves us beyond the chaos of our life. If we are sincere and fearless in our efforts we will be rewarded richly. If we trust that we can before we know it’s possible, nothing will be unreachable. If we leap even without a vision of a net, we will learn how to fly. If we trust the yes of the universe, we do not need to know how it will happen. If we do nothing, we will have nothing.

 

I know Jo had regrets before she died, how could she not? She regretted that she waited to travel the world. I felt sad for her mostly because she had realized her dream and lived with it for so many years before she was ready to pursue it. So many times people never get as far as realizing their dreams, not alone living them. Grandma always told me life was short, she is right. Use your time on this earth wisely. We have but one shot, and for most of us we have already lost much of the time we had been given. Turn the lights off around you, sit in the silence and let the light be revealed to you. Your path will only be illuminated as brightly as you allow yourself to see.

 

 

Reflections

Spend some time answering these questions. Use your answers as a compass to guide you to living a more lively life full of passion and happiness. Remember, take yourself out of the boxes before you answer, you will find a much more honest and real response that might even surprise you.

 

In your life, when have you felt the most alive?

If you could do anything, what would you do?

What stops you from doing what you love?

How are you spontaneous in your life?